Free Threshold by Sara Douglass Page B

placate Kofte.”
    “She hears,” Yaqob said simply, and Isphet shifted her eyes to me. Abruptly she thrust a small glass goblet into my hands.
    “What does it tell you, Tirzah?”
    This was as much a test as Yaqob’s questioning had been, and I could feel many eyes within the workshop turned my way, although only Yaqob and I could have heard Isphet’s question. I turned the goblet over in my hands. It was a plain vessel, used as a means to quench our thirst when the heat of the furnaces grew too hot.
    “It tells me that it lives, but that it would prefer to live elsewhere. There is a darkness here it does not like.”
    Isphet stared, then jerked her head. “Very well. Yaqob, come to my quarters tonight. Will you be safe?”
    “I am as nimble and invisible as a cat across those rooftops, Isphet. The guards will never see me.”
    “Well, be careful anyway, Yaqob. None of us can afford to lose you now.”
    Although the events of the daytime had twisted my world awry, the revelations of that night altered the very fabric of my life.
    In the evening we dampened down the furnaces and I walked in companionable silence with the women of Isphet’s household through the dusk to our quarters. We left the doors and windows open for the cool of the evening air while we ate, but once the meal was done and the dishes cleaned and set aside, Isphet ordered that the windows be shuttered, and all the doors save the one to the inner courtyard were locked.
    Then we waited. Saboa and I played listlessly at a game of tebente, taking it in turns to throw the marked sticks and move our clay figurines about the wooden board. But our hearts were not in it, and we jumped every time an insect frizzled in one of the two lamps Isphet had allowed to be lit.
    Yaqob came an hour after it was fully dark, and he brought with him a fellow glassworker from our workshop, Yassar. They had come across the rooftops of the tenement buildings, crawling slowly and silently, waiting as sporadic patrols of guards passed beneath them, then moving on again. Once they reached the roof of our building, they had come down the stairs of the courtyard.
    “Druse and Mayim?” Isphet asked as Yaqob and Yassar sat down.
    “They will sleep well tonight, Isphet. No, Tirzah, it is all right. A sleeping draught in their evening meal is all I have done. Your father will wake refreshed in the morning and not realise he has been drugged.”
    “We had to do it,” Yassar said.
    “Yes,” I said, “I know it.”
    “Good,” said Isphet. “Tirzah, I will now speak for some time. You will listen. If you have questions, you will wait until after I have spoken. First, I will speak a warning. If you betray us to the Magi, then you will eventually die, even if no-one in this room is left alive to take the revenge. Do you understand? ”
    I rocked back on my stool at the threat in her voice and her eyes. I risked a glance at Yaqob, but his eyes were as implacable as Isphet’s. “I understand, Isphet.”
    “Good. We place our lives in your hands with what we are about to reveal.”
    She breathed deep, relaxed, and spoke.
    “Many generations ago, long before the building of Threshold, Ashdod was a land where the people lived their lives surrounded by the voices of the elements – particularly the elements within metals and gems. The Elemental arts and magic flourished, as did reverence for the Soulenai. The Soulenai are deeply learned and magical spirits who live in a region we know only as the Place Beyond. They speak to us through the elements – they have ever had an affinity for metals and gems – and lend us the power for our work and our arts. So in the glass, or the metals and gems you handle, Tirzah, you may hear the voices not only of the particular element you hold, but sometimes also of the Soulenai, echoing from the Place Beyond.”
    I blinked. Very occasionally when I worked glass the voices were far stronger and more vivid than usual. Such was the case when